Kernel Estimation of Spot Volatility with Microstructure Noise Using Pre-Averaging

Abstract: We first revisit the problem of estimating the spot volatility of an It^o semimartingale using a kernel estimator. We prove a Central Limit Theorem with optimal convergence rate for a general two-sided kernel. Next, we introduce a new pre-averaging/kernel estimator for spot volatility to handle the microstructure noise of ultra high-frequency observations. We prove a Central Limit Theorem for the estimation error with an optimal rate and study the optimal selection of the bandwidth and kernel functions. We show that the pre-averaging/kernel estimator's asymptotic variance is minimal for exponential kernels, hence, justifying the need of working with kernels of unbounded support as proposed in this work. We also develop a feasible implementation of the proposed estimators with optimal bandwidth. Monte Carlo experiments confirm the superior performance of the devised method.